Instrumental Reviews

4.3

79% would recommend to a friend

(42 total reviews)

Anna-Katrina Shedletsky

83% approve of CEO

80% positive business outlook

Instrumental has an employee rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars, based on 42 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Instrumental employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

42 reviews
2.0
21 Apr 2023

Turnover Central - Beware Narcissism and Lies

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Wear lots of hats - tons of responsibilities not normally held by position. Beautiful office location - few blocks from Stanford. Lovely people working as office manager / recruiters

Cons

Very disorganized company with moving target metrics. Many false promises - compensation, promotions, etc. are promised and then forgotten. Stories are given to justify inconsistencies from leadership or poor company performance. Expected to "Figure it out" with the benefit being valuable experience. No vertical mobility. History of poor sales and lack of product market fit. Routinely at square 1 - CEO/Founder pivots to new strategies once a month and scraps any ideas previously tried in favor of getting more funding. Statistics are embellished to save face and increase recruiting ~70 person company has 5 full-time recruiters (LARGE turnover). Leaders are not qualified - most are high level ex-Apple engineers, NOT sales people or experienced managers

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Instrumental Response
3y
Thank you for sharing your feedback. We’re sorry you feel this way about your experience at Instrumental – we appreciate your honesty. At Instrumental, we value open communication and strive to #work-with-joy – which means continuously improving how we work and what we can change together to make it better. As a startup, our agility is a core part of our success and is intentional in how we operate. We understand that shifts in strategy can feel disruptive – so we pursue them carefully, but also fearlessly. We always seek and incorporate feedback from across the team before making strategy shifts so they can represent our best knowledge as a company, not just our leaders. Any significant change is explained to the whole company with a detailed rationale and presented as a draft for further refinement – which often does happen based on feedback from team members like you. Integrity and honesty are non-negotiables at Instrumental – and we aspire to be as transparent as we can because enabling every team member to understand the context of the challenges we’re working on encourages the best ideas to emerge. We work hard to refine our metrics and ensure they are communicated clearly to avoid miscommunication. As a company, we set aside time in our bi-weekly all-hands meetings for employees to ask questions and raise concerns, with or without anonymity. Sam and I believe that one area we have complete agency over as a company is how it feels to work at Instrumental: we strive to create an environment where every team member would reflect on their time at Instrumental and be thankful for how they developed and grew. Developing our careers ladders has been an iterative process, and our team has invested significant time over the last two quarters leveling up our ladders so that every team member at Instrumental can see a clear growth path. We do promotions on a twice-annual schedule. In our last cycle, nearly 20% of our team was promoted in recognition of their ownership, accountability to goals, and hitting development milestones. We prioritize creating a positive, engaging work environment where everyone feels heard and valued. We are committed to continuing to level up in this area. Building a diverse leadership team with the right expertise is paramount at Instrumental. We are deeply committed to selecting leaders who bring a combination of industry experience, exceptional leadership skills, and a proven track record of success. It is true that a majority of our leadership team, regardless of function, has a technical background – this is a competitive strength as our core mission is to solve a huge problem that creates $8T of waste annually by building cutting-edge technology and embedding it deeply within the daily workflows of our technical users. Our interview process for leaders is thoughtful and continues to evolve, ensuring that the leaders we bring on board possess diverse skills and strengths. A leader’s performance matters, and we take action when needed – usually supported by 360 feedback from the team. We genuinely appreciate your input and are committed to fostering an environment where everyone can thrive. Our leadership team is available to listen to your feedback one-on-one if that enables you to be more detailed about your specific concerns. Our team is here to support you. Anna
3.0
13 Dec 2018

Quintessential start-up experience

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Instrumental has no shortage of smart, thoughtful, and passionate colleagues. The technology is incredibly sound and impactful to customers. There's a huge opportunity for those interested in market creation or developing new technologies for an antiquated industry.

Cons

Management is restrictive and operates in Apple-like fashion, where every major decision is subject to change at the CEO's discretion despite data-driven evidence or recommendation from a more experienced authority on the matter. A once vibrant culture has taken a back-seat for "growth at any expense" and unprofessional, 'favoritism' culture by management that gossip about current employees to others, including others in their direct reporting line.

1.0
9 Feb 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

• Great people working here, built some great relationships • Great location for office in Palo Alto near to lots of restaurants •

Cons

• Work-life balance is non existent in sales • Lies about promotions, comp, etc., in order to keep you grinding • Horrible leadership with constant changes in comp structure and quota • Terrible sales leaders, the micromanagement makes you miserable • Product consistently doesn’t work for customers leading to high churn, can count on 1 hand how many deals I witnessed get closed in over a year • Sales people are MISERABLE, engineering seems to love life. All the blame is put on the sales and marketing teams by execs and CEO (who is an engineer btw) • Mass layoffs in marketing department, entire BDR team left in 2023 leading to 0 inbounds for sales • AE's have a 3-6 month shelf life here, BDR's make it 6-12 months before quitting or being laid off/fired. Don't do it to yourself if you're in sales, someone has to be honest because the positive reviews are all from engineering, this is not a 4 star company

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Instrumental Response
2y
We appreciate current and former employees taking the time to share feedback. We acknowledge that a year ago we went through a period of significant change in both our sales leadership and how we approach sales/customer support. Despite their difficulty, those changes have made us a more effective company and a better team. We made a significant effort and investment to stay close to team needs during this period through regularly soliciting feedback and transparent communication. In regular anonymous surveys, we’ve shown a significant turnaround in alignment to our mission, strategy, and leadership. We appreciate everyone’s partnership and feel proud of the strength of progress that has been made. Feedback related to our CEO and leadership more broadly is also something we take very seriously. It is deeply concerning to hear that you felt leadership shifted blame onto teams rather than taking accountability for shortcomings. We would like to take a moment to state that our leadership team takes responsibility for the strategic shifts and outcomes in the business. We believe in fostering a culture of transparency and open communication at Instrumental and regularly check in with team members in different ways to ensure they are receiving the support they need to excel and take risks to push our mission forward. Finally, we are truly sorry to hear about your frustration regarding compensation and promotions. We have defined career ladders and associated fair and competitive compensation packages for all roles. Promotions require operating at the next level defined in the career ladder, and managers collaborate with individuals to provide feedback and to plot clear paths forward in their career development. Last year, 27% of the company earned promotions associated with increased mastery and scope in their roles. It’s one of our core beliefs that regardless of company outcome, Instrumental should be an amazing place to grow your career. We believe that we are fulfilling that mission for our people, while we work hard every day to fulfill our mission for our customers in enabling them to build better products.
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Glassdoor has 45 Instrumental reviews submitted anonymously by Instrumental employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Instrumental is right for you.